


Instant

by likeafouralarmfire



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, mostly just Shaw caring for Root and Root having lots of feelings, soft tender mildly angsty smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 21:03:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12044223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeafouralarmfire/pseuds/likeafouralarmfire
Summary: A mildly injured Root asks Shaw to stay in her hotel room just a little longer.





	Instant

“It’s not broken. Just bruised.” Root’s forearm is swollen and turning some funky colors, but the bones are perfectly sound. “Gonna hurt like hell by tomorrow, but you’ll be good as new in a couple weeks.”

“Thanks, doc,” she says, trying to wink through her wince. Which would normally be eye-roll-worthy, but there’s something in her voice that’s not quite right. Exhaustion, probably. Her eyes are wet and red around the rims; could be smoke or fatigue or pain from the bruises.

“You’ve got some anti-inflammatories around here?”

“Should be a few ibuprofen left in my bag.”

“Then I guess my work here is done.”

The hotel bed creaks with the lifted weight. A cheap bed in a cheap, dingy hotel: the walls bubbling with age and spotted with mildew near the ceiling. That Machine should really get Root some decent accommodations, considering all the dirty work she does on its behalf.

Root’s still sitting on the bed, her fingertips hovering over the bruises as she watches them develop. 

“Did you ever take Polaroid pictures, as a kid?”

“Sure. Of course.” Clearly Root’s not going to get the ibuprofen. There’s a pill bottle in her bag, nestled in a silk shirt. The cups by the sink are the cheap foam kind, but they’ll do. Root accepts three pills and a half-filled cup of water and downs them in succession.

“Thank you,” she says. Then, she points at the darkening patches on her forearm. “See? Like a Polaroid.”

“You’re so fucking weird. Get some rest.”

Root reaches out with her uninjured hand and grabs a wrist.

“Shaw?”

“What?”

“Will you… just stay a few more minutes?”

A few choice responses come to mind. About preferring to sit on a cactus, maybe, or spend time with a rabid raccoon. But her eyes are wet, and her lost expression pulls like a kind of gravity.

“Okay, Root. Just a few more minutes.”

 

* * *

 

Shaw sits back down on the bed next to you. She stares at the door, then at her lap. You’re not sure why you asked her to stay. All you know is that your arm is aching, your head is foggy, and when Shaw stood up to go, the thought of her not being here was awful.

“So… do you want to watch TV or something?” she asks.

The thought that Shaw would actually stay here just to watch TV on the crappy little set across the room is strangely moving.

“All right,” you say.

Shaw jumps up and grabs the remote. You kick off your shoes, climb onto the bed, and prop yourself against the pillows to see the screen. After pulling her boots off, Shaw joins you, beating the lumpy pillows into submission and settling down a few inches away.

There’s not much on. Shaw flips through channels at a brisk speed until she finds some 80s action movie. She leaves the volume low as the images flash across the screen, illuminating the drab walls and blackout curtains.

Ignoring your throbbing arm, you tilt your head just enough to watch Shaw. Either she doesn’t notice or pretends not to notice; she just stares straight ahead at the screen. The tendons in her throat quiver when she swallows. There’s a smudge of dirt or soot just below her jawline. 

God, she’s beautiful.

“Shaw?” you whisper.

She pivots to face you. Her eyes dance with reflections from the TV screen.

You touch her cheek. She doesn’t respond, doesn’t pull away as your hand slides behind her ear, into her hair. When you lean in and touch your lips gently to hers.

 

* * *

 

Root’s mouth is cool and soft—and maybe trembling, just a little. Her kiss is a question. A question with an answer. She smiles and hums into the deepening kiss.

It’s not like this kind of thing hasn’t happened before. A few times. Maybe more than a few. Root knows how to have a good time. She doesn’t shy away from rough and she doesn’t hide how much she likes to cause pain. It’s… symbiotic. And she’s a damned good kisser—she kisses as if kissing were the whole thing. Until she’s on to the next thing, which is always good too.

Tonight, she’s really taking her time with the mouth work. Her breath feathers over all of the places she’s made wet, the air lacquering and chilling them before she warms them again with her lips and her tongue. 

Root hums into the kiss when pulled in closer by the small of her back. The hollow of her waist is soft over her shirt. Even softer underneath. She whimpers a little at the touch and presses herself closer. Then, unexpectedly, she pulls apart from the kiss.

“Is this okay?” she asks, glancing from one eye to the other.

“Is what okay?”

“This. My kissing you.”

“I’d have stopped you if it weren’t. Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and, closing her eyes, leans back in for another kiss.

 

* * *

 

Shaw’s fingers dig harder into your waist, and for the first time, something makes you want to ask her to be gentle. So you pull away from the kiss for one more painful second and prop your forehead against hers.

“Softer,” you pant. “I—I might have some more bruises.”

“I didn’t see any more,” says Shaw, with characteristic bluntness. “Want me to check you over?”

“That’s okay. Just… a little softer. Please.”

Shaw shrugs. But she loosens her hold, runs her fingertips over your ribs and your back. She helps you lift off your shirt and take off your bra, taking care not to bump your arm, and shucks her own off without ceremony. When she presses her bare chest to yours, you shudder at the warmth and rightness of her. You slide your fingers into the mass of her hair and tilt her mouth to yours and kiss her and kiss her. You bite her neck, just below her ear, and take in the smell of her hair. Friction and warmth starts to slick the skin where the two of you are pressed together. 

The first time this happened, you were stuck in the CIA safe house, bored and keyed up. You were attracted to her the moment you saw her—and while you were mostly kidding when you suggested an interesting way of passing the time, Shaw took you up on it. It was messy and searing, painful and intense. She pulled the pleasure out of you with sheer force—not that you were complaining.

But now and then, in the many times that have followed, there have been these strange, isolated moments of gentleness—if you didn’t know better, you might call them tenderness—between her slamming you against walls, or sinking her fingernails or teeth into your flesh. Simple things, so fast you could miss them if you weren’t paying close attention. A hand to your cheek. Lips stamping your neck. The brush of fingertips against your waist, just to feel your skin—or maybe even to make you feel good, once she noticed your response.

She touches your arm—careful not to brush the bruises—and you wonder what she’s thinking right now. You’re the thorn in her side, her comrade, her sometime hookup—not her friend, and not her lover. And yet here she is, touching you carefully while the TV blares, ignored, in the background.

“Better?” she asks, her mouth flushed with kissing you, her eyes dark, dark, dark.

And that’s the moment you know you’re in trouble.

 

* * *

 

Fuck, Root’s skin is so soft. And her hair. She’s damp, clammy, at the back of her neck, at her temples, underneath her breasts and in the hollow of her throat. And she smells like shampoo and sweat and the grit of the city and like something else, something completely hers. 

There’s always been something about Root. Something compelling—that actually compels—like she’s begging to have something done to her. Maybe a punch, it seemed like once—a punch or a gunshot, or a good fuck. Or the kind of kiss that knocks the wind out of her. And now that all four are well and truly checked off the list, why does she still feel like an unfinished puzzle?

Root reaches down to unfasten both pairs of pants. Her hand slides along the length of a thigh, squeezes a handful of ass. She hums into the kiss, sucks a lip between her teeth before letting it snap back.

“Help me,” she says, tugging lightly at the waistband.

Soon everyone’s clothes are strewn on the floor, and Root’s on her back, her face a cipher underneath the flashing images from the ignored TV. Her injured arm is palm up behind her head, so she looks like a ballerina in—which position? Fourth, maybe—and her other hand is twirling a strand of hair in a way that feels weirdly good, despite the softness of the gesture. Her eyes dart around, careful not to rest anywhere too long.

“Sameen?” she says, sensing hesitation. “Don’t be shy.” She grabs a hand, drags it down her body to her inner thigh.

God. She’s so wet. Her eyes flutter closed at the first touch, the way they always do.

“There,” she sighs. “Right there.” She tilts back her chin, sighs, and lets the pleasure take over.

 

* * *

Sameen starts slowly. She lets you run your uninjured hand over her hair, her shoulder, her neck and throat—though she flinches a little when you touch her cheek. The flashing TV images halo her dark silhouette as she hovers over you, and it’s probably for the best that you can’t see her face.

“That feel good?”

You nod. “Inside,” you instruct. “Two fingers.”

She tests you with one, slides two inside, breathes sharply when you moan. 

“You’re so wet.”

“You made me so wet. The way you kissed me.”

She shudders a little at that. Then she slides down your body and takes a nipple into her mouth. The feeling shoots through you, connecting the places where she’s touching you like an electric current. You bury your fingers in her hair and pull her closer. You can feel the soft circles her tongue makes, the light suction, connecting the wet junction of your nipple in her mouth to the wet sliding of her fingers inside you in a contiguous line of pleasure. Your pulse around her fingers matches the pulse you feel in the bruises, still hot and blooming, in the flesh of your arm. The three points of sensation form a jagged line through your body: bruise and bone and softness and Sameen.

“I want your mouth,” you tell her. “Please.”

 

* * *

 

 

The first taste of Root is a little surprising, every time.

The first time wasn’t the CIA safe house—that was a quick, vindictive fuck that turned into another, and another, in various states of not-quite-undress—but another time, in an anonymous hotel room kind of like this one. For all of her banter and flirting and terrible puns, that perpetual air of danger that surrounds her, she looked so vulnerable and soft just at that second before, with her legs spread, her lips and her eyes wide open and her chest rising and falling as she waited for the next move. And the way she sighed with relief at the feeling of a warm mouth against her skin, as if at a kept promise.

Root tastes like flint, like petrichor, like sweat, like danger. She tastes the way she smells. Which is to say, kind of warm and soft and sweet, too, because she may be a badass, not to mention a royal pain in the ass, but she’s still a woman. A beautiful, absurd, infuriating, intoxicating woman. And nothing in this world smells better than a woman. Especially—ugh, ridiculous—especially Root.

“There,” she murmurs, and grabs onto a handful of hair. Her fingers tug at the pins, down to the roots. “Yes. Right—right there.”

She’s soft and wet and helpless, and panting like she has to surface from the water every time she breathes. Root always sounds like this when she’s feeling really good. Like her mind can’t quite keep pace with her body. 

“Don’t stop,” she says. “Just—stay with me.”

 

 

* * *

 

Sameen is gripping your thighs with one hand and inside you with the other, pulling you to the edge with her fingers and mouth. You’re trembling around her, waiting for something to break.

Her hair, woven around the fingers of your uninjured hand, glints with the light from the TV. You pull the curtain away from her face, and it’s something about her cheek, concave and shaking with effort, that tips you over the edge.

You whisper her name, your voice hoarse and split, and then you come, hard, shaking underneath her. Her tongue and fingers keep pace, helping you ride it out.

Melting back into the bed, you relax your fingers in her hair, comb out the strands, and twirl the ends in spirals around your fingers. She slides her body on top of yours and kisses you, softly and slowly. You taste yourself on her tongue—yourself and her—and her mouth warms against yours as you kiss her over and over and over.

God, are you ever in trouble.

“Can I repay the favor?” you murmur against the corner of her mouth.

“That’s okay. Your good arm is out of commission.”

“Want to stay a little longer? Finish the movie?”

“I guess,” she says, rolling over and pulling the sheets over you both. “It’s probably got another half hour to go.”

You curl into the crook of Sameen’s shoulder and drape your bruised arm carefully across her waist. She doesn’t stop you; she just shifts a little and rearranges your hair. Her body, stiff at first, little by little softens into complacency.

The bruises ache; they’ll be dark and pronounced by the time you wake up, and Sameen will be long gone before the sun rises. But for now, all you want to think about is the damp warmth of her chest against your cheek, the tingling in the slick place between your legs, and her hand absently tousling your hair. You will this moment to imprint in your memory, to surface like a bruise. Like a Polaroid: concrete and singular.

The movie blares quietly in the background.


End file.
